Background: The refugee crisis has resulted in massive waves of migration towards Europe. Besides sufficient and appropriate healthcare services, these vulnerable populations need kindness, respect, acceptance, empathy, and attention to basic needs. Healthcare professionals ought to have a respectful and compassionate approach to safeguard the dignity and interests of the people they care for. Aim: The overall aim of the European Refugees-Human Movement and Advisory Network (EUR-HUMAN) project was to provide good and affordable, comprehensive, person-centred, integrated and compassionate care for all ages and all ailments, taking into account the transcultural settings and the needs, wishes and expectations of the newly arriving refugees. This paper reports on findings to help establish what the nature of compassionate care for refugees consists of and implies and how its implementation could be promoted across European countries and healthcare settings. Methods: A two-day Expert Consensus Meeting (ECM) took place in order to reach consensus in different thematic areas including cultural issues in health care, continuity of care, information and health promotion, health assessment, mental health, mother and child care, infectious diseases, and vaccination coverage. Results: Notably, all experts stressed the need to address mental health problems. Interactions and input received during the meeting highlighted the urgent need for compassionate care for these vulnerable populations. Additionally, the needs reported by refugees and other migrants helped identify a serious gap in terms of compassionate attitudes exhibited by healthcare workers. Linguistic and cultural barriers exacerbate the effect of the lack of compassion, especially where healthcare information and psychological support are urgently needed but an appropriate supportive framework is missing. Conclusions: This European collaborative capacity-building project attempts to develop a long-term strategy to tackle this issue, focusing in particular on the design and delivery of appropriate person-centred and compassionate-based primary healthcare (PHC) services. A list of recommendations developed by this consensus panel may facilitate the design and implementation of similar capacity-building efforts, as well as the design of educational intervention programmers for a person-centred and compassionate PHC for vulnerable populations.

BackgroundGeneral political views are rarely considered when discussing public support for tobacco control policies and tobacco use. The aim of this study was to explore potential associations between political views, smoking and support for tobacco control policies.MethodsWe analysed responses from 22,313 individuals aged ≥15 years from 28 European Union (EU) member states, who self-reported their political views (far-left [1–2 on a scale 1–10]; centre-left (3-4); centre (5-6); centre-right (7-8); and far-right (9-10) in wave 82.4 of the Eurobarometer survey in 2014. We ran multi-level logistic regression models to explore associations between political views and smoking, as well as support for tobacco control policies, adjusting for socio-demographic factors.ResultsCompared to those placing themselves at the political centre, people with far-left political views were more likely to be current smokers (Odds Ratio [OR] = 1.13; 95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 1.01–1.26), while those in the centre-right were the least likely to smoke (OR = 0.84; 95% CI: 0.76–0.93). Similar associations were found for having ever been a smoker. Respondents on the left side of the political spectrum were more likely to support tobacco control policies and those on the centre-right were less likely to support them, as compared to those at the political centre, after controlling for smoking status.ConclusionsGeneral political views may be associated not only with support for tobacco control policies, but even with smoking behaviours, which should be taken into account when discussing these issues at a population level. Further research is needed to explore the implications of these findings.

It is evident that the current financial crisis and working conditions have a strong impact on health status of young medical researchers in Greece. The observed increased trends and the identified predictors could guide targeted and comprehensive interventions towards tackling distress among the medical researchers not only in Greece but also in other countries suffering from financial crisis.

Theme: 'Reducing the risk of chronic diseases in general practice/family medicine'